by Nick Spacek

When Covid hit, many film festivals went virtual and have continued on in hybrid form over the last year or so as things have opened up. While that means you can check out films from the comfort of your own home, rather than queuing up outside a theatre and hoping for enough seats, the real treat of a genre festival isn’t just the cinema, but the various events which take place around them.

Panels, Q&As, performance pieces, and concerts are just a few of the things which make attending in person such a joy, to say nothing of riding in an elevator and discovering you’re standing next to one of your favourite actors. That’s why we wish we could hop a flight down to Fort Lauderdale and South Beach, Florida, for the ninth annual Popcorn Frights Film Festival, running August 10th – 20th.

While much of the fest’s viewing options will be offered virtually, worth making the trek is a 60th-anniversary screening of Herschell Gordon Lewis’ shot-in-Miami-Beach gore-fest masterpiece, Blood Feast, which will receive a one-night-only immersive presentation, thanks to a live original score performance by Miami artist Richard Vergez. We had to know how this came to be and what might come of it, so we spoke with Vergez about it.

His introduction to Lewis’ films came via Something Weird Video, says the musician…

“My buddy had a DVD compilation of all their trailers,” Vergez explains. “We used to have a Goth DJ night in Fort Lauderdale at this place called Roxanne’s and would play this stuff on the TVs in the bar. Since the volume on the TVs was turned off, whatever records we were spinning would kind of score the video imagery. Seeing some of the clips, there led me to seek out the original films, which in turn led me to Blood Feast.”

As to how this all came about?

“It was all Igor [Shteyrenberg, co-founder and co-director of Popcorn Frights]’s idea,” says Vergez. “He came to me with a few films to rescore, and Blood Feast is the one that stuck.”

Blood Feast does have an original score already present, so we were curious as to how one goes about rescoring a movie. We ask Vergez if it helped that, in this case, the original score was pretty minimal.

“I appreciate the fact that the score of the original is pretty minimal, with those rattling drums being the overall theme,” the musician continues, saying his aim in rescoring it will retain some of that minimal, pedestrian quality. “You won’t be hearing any epic arpeggios or crunchy beats. I like to keep the sound palette specific to that era, so expect some found percussion, twangy guitar, and campy organ sounds. It’s all about the atmosphere.”

And the atmosphere is definitely part of it because, as Vergez goes on to say that with all of his live scores, the structure is mainly improvised…

“So if it is performed again, it will be a different experience,” meaning this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Although, concludes Vergez, “If it goes over well, maybe Popcorn Frights will have me on again!”

Blood Feast screens at the Savor Cinema Fort Lauderdale on August 11th. You can book tickets here.